Perilous Prophecy by Leanna Renee Hieber

Author:Leanna Renee Hieber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

There was no longer any question; the Grand Work was more difficult away from home. This was doubly frustrating for Beatrice, who had felt such pain in Cairo when the phoenix fire was ripped from the Whisper-world and transplanted. She’d assumed when she got to London she’d be twice the Leader for being near its source. Would that were so.

The work continued. Exorcisms in squalid rooms, chasing poltergeists down narrow streets, battling veritable spirit gangs that clogged alleys and arteries of the city, all of it took more time, energy, repetition, and brute force than it had in Cairo. Weeks felt like years.

There was a certain comfort in having most of her Guard at the ready there in the newly renamed Promethe Hall, in the upstairs sets of fine wood-paneled apartments. Never mind that Ibrahim had his quarters just down the hall or that they all parted whenever the work was through.

The academy was a bustling place, workers finishing up with spare yet elegant final touches. Now and then Beatrice spied the Quaker headmaster, Richard Thompson, and his niece, Rebecca, striding about the place with pride, joy, and admirable efficiency.

While Belle’s gifts had made the Guard rather invisible to the goings-on around them, there was one exception.

Whenever Beatrice found herself in the path of Rebecca Thompson, the girl stared at her, narrowing her eyes as if struggling to place her. A powerful mind churned behind those young blue-gray eyes, and Beatrice wondered about what the goddess and Ibrahim had said. Did Intuitions know their own? Would there be a changing of the Guard here in London? What did that mean for Beatrice and her company?

With the Pull almost always in play, at times Beatrice would go out alone to do the Grand Work, if the disturbance was faint enough. Usually the correction would be simple, the admonishment of a spirit with a smack of blue fire.

Tonight, something wasn’t right, and Beatrice knew it. So did Ibrahim, apparently, for he appeared at her side as she headed for Athens’s great front doors. Without a second glance or a word of greeting between them, they had a cab brought round and set out in pursuit of the Pull.

“Highgate,” Beatrice said to the driver. Then, to Ibrahim, “Shall I call the others? It isn’t much.”

Ibrahim blinked. “It may not be much, but we’re not very good these days.”

“Not here we aren’t. You’re right, we need all the help we can muster.”

She closed her eyes and felt Ibrahim doing the same, reaching out. She allowed the Pull to take over her body and felt it ripple, the sensation unifying all six. The others would follow the call if her message could find its way through the thick London fog.

“How long can we—?”

Ibrahim finished her thought. “I daresay, if it’s always this difficult on this shore, the Grand Work will kill us.”

It was uncanny. For one who seemed so indifferent to her, he had an odd way of knowing her thoughts. She pretended to stare out the window, hiding her agitation, as questions of intimacy flooded her mind.

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